Reset
by Wintry Leen
Summary: Sakura wants them back. A collection of SS drabbles. (#4 is up, based on ch.697 - Sakura, Sasuke, Naruto) #19.
1. Reset

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto in any way possible.

**Author's Notes:** Finally, I'm starting a personal collection of drabbles/finger exercises. It'll help me stay alive. Haha.

* * *

_**Reset**_

Like a sudden surge of chakra, he invades her.

She feels him course through her arteries, and her heart is caught in an arrest. When she finally sees him – his back facing her – she pauses, mobilizes her lips, and attempts to issue the words she has never thought she will say ever again.

"Sasu…ke-kun?"

She asks not because she hesitates to think that the man in front of her is Sasuke-kun. She asks because she knows the man (too much that seeing not his face but his back does not reduce him to dusts in her memory) and desires to know in return if he shares the same recognition.

"Sakura, huh."

Perhaps there is a part of him urging him to face her fully, but he opts to turn his head ever so slightly because he still recognizes her voice. He recognizes the woman he was so close to killing before. And he does not know what he has done to deserve such constant treatment: she still calls him _Sasuke-kun_ after everything.

He is not ready to face her and promise an apology. But he will…_he will_. For on this battlefield, she will never have to be alone again.

**…**


	2. One Day

**A/N:** Feels for Naruto 690. My interpretation. Word vomit. Review?

**Title:** One Day

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When everything is over, it's not for her.

Kaguya has been sealed, and Sakura begins to feel the clarity of the future in their instant present.

She used to dream before of sunlight, bridge across a river, and two figures standing side by side, waiting, as Sakura petals danced around them, flitting across and spanning the distance between them which she never measured for it was immaterial. But that was when her hair was still of an innocent and untainted shade of pink and her eyes, still of exuberant hue of green.

Then her hair started to catch smudges, the strands bespattered with flecks of blood, her eyes exposed to the fleetingness of life, of everything despite the green gentle glow she continuously summons into her hand to save life, to save Sasuke-kun – even when all she had ever done was watching him walk away, never even able to count his steps.

So she stopped dreaming because reality is too real to sleep on: she sees the war in episodes even when she does not look. So she focuses because that is the only stability she can achieve – to focus on healing people, focus on releasing the power she has waited for so long to be deemed worthy of deploy.

Then in a mighty burst of pent-up frustration (of herself always having to watch from behind) and longing (for a chance at a new beginning), she charges – this time alongside her teammates – and it's over.

When she looks at him, she realizes she wants to dream again and make it real this time.

Because when she calls him ("_Sasuke-kun!_") and he responds ("_Here_") and she sees that expression of him she has not seen for so long (although she might have imagined it), she just knows it's not over for them.

…


	3. Wisps

**A/N:** Based on ch. 693/694. Notepad. Apology for errors. Not that refined. Respite from my hellish life. Save me.

[Starting on the sequel to _Until we find ourselves empty_ in two weeks. Tips/Suggestions?]

**Title: **Wisps

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_Wisps_

When he decides to submerge himself in the darkness, drowning is the last thing that worries him. He needs no rescue, no life vest, no remedy, no surfacing.

So when she speaks – and he halts – there's just no other way.

She's like air tempting him to breathe her in, and he constantly refuses because he's afraid to breathe out – afraid to realize that he's still conscious, still alive, still human.

For being human means admitting the pain – and he's so damn tired of desensitizing himself from it and failing every time.

Perhaps somewhere in the hollow of his heart, there's a void so heavy it almost gravitates him towards them, towards her, towards a direction. But he decides to stop playing with threads. He cannot be pulled. He is stuck – stuck in his past he can never forget because living means remembering.

He doesn't know if there's a present, but he believes in the future. He'll sever all these threads sewn to the past and weave an unblemished future for everyone. He'll do it alone, he says, for he can shoulder all the hatred. How impossible is it then for him to shoulder her love?

When he pierces through her, he'll never know it but she cries because _why can't he ever dare to touch_.

She's too naive, he thinks, for loving him, for trying to save him because who needs love and saving in their life so fleeting and flimsy? He doesn't want to hold on to something he will lose...again. He will lose her sooner or later –and it makes a_ beginning_ so fucking useless.

**...**


	4. The Artist

**A/N:** Based on chapter 697. Sakura has opened her eyes, and I have the feeling she will intervene – like literally coming between the two. I don't know why my imagination opts for such tragedy when I could've easily envisioned her hugging Sasuke from behind like what she did before.

[almost done with my draft for the sequel to _Until we find ourselves empty_]

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_The Artist_

In nothingness, she sees illusions and dreams – montage of the past melting into the present creating what she can make out as blobs of future. Because in nothingness, there is only nothing, and it is up to her to create something.

On this black canvass, given what she has – memories, hope, and silence – she strokes life as she has known it since she was a child – light banters, Naruto, affected insults, Sasuke-kun, calculated humor, Naruto and Sasuke-kun, blind contentment, reunion and ramen and reconciliation. These shards of recollection scintillate from up above her, and she reaches out to capture, to bleed all over again, to spray red over the black and then to live, to wake up.

Waking up, for her, feels like an extraneous condition given that she has been obliged to not come between two extremities. Yet she dares to be an artist – possessing a courageous soul, waking up from an artless slumber, asking about her beloved broken painting.

She only used to admire from an imperceptible yet immense distance, the way a spectator can only gaze at a painting because there is no crossing the line when the desire to be near is a potential ruination of the object.

She used to stay behind, admiring and watching her teammates fighting together for her, for the whole team. They are her heroes, and she silently praises them so much that she has stood a step behind for fear of getting in the way, of tarnishing their safety.

Naruto _and_ Sasuke-kun would always be her joy, a personal favorite, like a painting depicting her life.

So she steels herself and resolves that she needs proximity in order to recreate. She has been through so much that she deems herself worthy of an advance. If she cannot be ahead, then she comes between.

She wants her beloved painting back, and she will recreate even if it entails destroying her.

**...**


End file.
